US Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go ahead

The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for Tennessee inmate Christa Pike to be executed, overturning a last-minute reprieve.The killing by lethal injection was scheduled for Wednesday morning before judges from the Sixth Circuit Appeals court halted the execution. Tennessee's attorney general then immediately requested the Supreme Court to overrule the lower court's stay.Pike, 50, has been awaiting execution since she was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer.If the execution proceeds, Christa Pike will be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. It was not immediately clear when the execution would take place.Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh granted the application to vacate the stay of the execution. No explanation for lifting the stay was provided in the order.The top court's three liberal justices - Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson - dissented in Wednesday evening's order.Sotomayor wrote that she dissents because the decision cleared the way for Tennessee to execute Pike before her pending legal challenges to her conviction "can be properly considered"."Tennessee's desire to ex...